Concert

"All alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare prism of the mesa.  The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon.  The bruises hrt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight.  At the edge of the precipice he sat down.  The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death.  He had only to take one step, one little jump....  He held out his right hand in the moonlight.  From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing.  Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light.  Drop, drop, drop.  Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow....  He had discovered Time and Death and God"--Brave New World

On Wednesday night the History Meetup met to discuss the Vikings.  Unfortunately we didn't have our usual room and had to go to a less sound-proof one, and that night they were having a book release at Dora Keough and the noise from that made it hard for us to talk. (They had the nerve to shush us!)

A few days ago I went to  bought a copy of Thomas F. Madden's Istanbul:  City of Majesty at the Crossroads of the World.  I'm reading it for next month's History Meetup on the Turkish Empire, but the library didn't have any copies at nearby branches.  The preface was so vivid that I read it out loud at Saturday's Crowdreads Meetup! (John read some Coco Chanel quotes.)

This afternoon my singing group had a concert for the old folk at Havcare Residential! (There was one resident there who reminded me of Burl Ives.) It's our last singing before the summer break, unless we perform at that street festival in June...

I wore my black suit with the bowtie, while everyone else was casual. (Oh well, I don't get many opportunities to dress up...) I had to remove some makeup that got on the bowtie, then figure out how to put it on, so I was afraid that I'd be late, but I was on time.

One of the songs we sang was "Dream a Little Dream." I remember when I was taking the ballroom dancing lessons at the Arthur Murray studio years ago, and that was one of the songs they'd play with foxtrot.  As a result, when I sing that song I'm always reminded of the foxtrot steps! We also sang a Beatles medley that included "Follow the Sun," which I'd never heard.

Korean books

"They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six.  So far without success.  Mr. Foster sighed and shook his head"--Brave New World

Sunday my Classic Book Club discussed Uncle Tom's Cabin.  I finished the Viking book and started Brave New World for the group's next event.

Saturday afternoon at the Crowdreads Meetup I read aloud the first few pages of Brave New World. (I wish I could have read a foreword Huxley wrote that concluded "You pays your money and you takes your chances," but this edition didn't have it.)

I filled up the notebook in which I've been writing memoir pieces for the Monday afternoon group.  A few days ago I went to Indigo Books and bought a new green notebook with a tree etched on the front!

Saturday I picked up several Korean folkore picture books at the Palmerston library. (They have quite a few Korean books there since it's just east of Koreatown.) I've started reading a story about a child who appeared in a magic place or somewhere and didn't have any family or anything...

I also got a children's biography of a famous Korean technological genius called Jang Yongshil.  He lived about 600 years ago and had a hard time getting ahead because he wasn't born into a scholar-elite family.  But he ended up designing precision astronomical instruments and automatic rain gauges and such.  Translating it into English is slow work, even with the considerable help of Google Translate, but I think I'm learning more. (There are a couple of details I've had to ask Hongmin about.)

Chocolate time

On Tuesday I bought a lot of post-Easter chocolate.  One item was a big chocolate egg that contained a miniature Stanley Cup with a Chicago Black Hawks banner (some assembly required).  Another egg contained a mini-yoyo and jigsaw puzzle of the kiddie show Paw Patrol, except that the jigsaw puzzle pieces were so thin they wouldn't stay together!

I'm in the last part of the Viking book.  But I haven't even started Hillbilly Elegy!  I guess I'll have to return it and try it another time.

I've finished doing the first round of all the Korean quizzes on Duolingo! (The last two were about last year's Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and K-pop music.) Now I'm going to Palmerston library to borrow some Korean children's books...

Comics Kingdom, the website where I read King Features comic strips, has gone through a big redesign, which has been a bit of a headache.  While the day's new strips have traditionally come at midnight, I sometimes have to wait till the morning to read the latest classic strips.

Quora has some odd questions.  Someone asked, "How should I explain to someone that they can't lie to me?" and someone else asked, "What don't most liberals realize?" And under language, people want to know the reason for irregularities like the British ending words with -our and the Americans ending them with -or.  Honestly, I have no idea!

Hongmin says that my first Korean letter had just a few "tiny-winy" mistakes!  She was late getting back to me because she had a big exam and ended up sleeping all day afterward. (She got a high grade.)

JUAREZ

"Virtue is a formidable weapon in the hands of an enemy"--Juarez

Wednesday night I saw William Dieterle's Juarez, for the second time, with the History Meetup.  It was one of three prestigious Warner Brothers biopics where Dieterle directed Paul Muni, the others being The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Life of Emile Zola. (I first saw it back in the '80s on the CBC late show that broadcast a lot of old Warner Brothers movies, hosted by Ben Gordon.)

The movie got better as it got along, but Muni's hagiographic Juarez wasn't so interesting; it was really about Brian Ahearne as the misguided, doomed Emperor Maximilian. (Of course there's a subtext about resisting the Nazis...)

A couple of people from my Crowdreads Meetup turned up at the screening, which was nice.  This afternoon I went to their group, and we were still talking about the movie.  I was also talking about the Viking history I'm reading.  Someone else had some quotes from Einstein. (I like his quote, "Don't feel bad if you have problems with mathematics.  Mine are bigger.")

An elegy for THE NATION

Katrina Van den Heuvel recently commemorated the 25th anniversary of becoming editor of the leftist magazine The Nation.  I'm sorry to say that she's ruined it. (At least she took longer than Tina Brown, who reduced The New Yorker to trendy, weaselly mediocrity well before the end of her six-year tenure.)

Back in the 1990s The Nation was required reading for people like me, in contrast to the wonkish Beltway neoliberalism of The New Republic, which Martin Peretz ruined in his own time.  For me, that magazine's defining moment came in 1986 when they came out in favor of Congress funding Reagan's contra campaign against Nicaragua--for them, anticommunism ultimately trumped their much-vaunted disapproval of terrorism!

But I digress, of course.  Back in the '90s The Nation had two great columnists in Christopher Hitchens (before he became the Pentagon's useful idiot after 9/11--sigh) and Alexander Cockburn.  And Katha Pollitt was also very readable, at least in her early years.  True, there were bores like Jonathan Schell, Daniel Singer and William S. Greider, but better too wide a range of views than too narrow. (I'm looking at you, The Daily Beast!)

What happened next?  Around 2001, The Nation came to represent the "play it safe" left. It goes back to the 2000 election, when Ralph Nader became the scapegoat for Bill Clinton and Al Gore's ineptness, with The Nation's press columnist Eric Alterman leading the charge. 

And I definitely do consider Nader a scapegoat:  Gore might well have lost without Nader on the ballot, and he might well have succeeded with him.  As far as I'm concerned, the real story about the 2000 election is that the left overwhelmingly stayed loyal to the Democrats, even in non-swing states where their support clearly wasn't needed, and realized the worst of both worlds.  If they weren't quite as unanimous as the Democratic Party needed them to be, the latter have themselves to blame.  Wishing, "If only we'd been a bit more unanimous!" is very, very lame.  And more importantly, such scapegoating has made it easier for the Democrats to continue to make the same mistakes and fail again and again.

But The Nation was now in the "play it safe" business.  In 2004 they published an article by an African-American minister appealing to Nader not to run again, urging him to "take back the party" instead. (The power of wishful thinking...) Then the editors  themselves called on Nader not to run again.  But Nader did run again, voters on the left voted Democrat again, and George W. Bush succeeded again.

Pragmatism is a slippery slope.  Consider the 2016 election.  Right after the final California primary (the one where they didn't dare run an exit poll), there was a report in The Nation insisting that the primary hadn't been "rigged" against Bernie Sanders.  And in October they ran a whole slew of articles clearly intended to get out the vote for Hillary.  I actually felt sorry for them!

And now the Clintonites are blaming Sanders for their heroine's embarrassing failure. "If only Bernie hadn't said so many Mean Things about Hillary, everyone would have been happy with her!" (A truly "pragmatic" view would suggest that a candidate who couldn't quite survive being the subject of Mean Things in the primary was a poor choice for the nomination.) The "pragmatists" have gone from scapegoating to killing the messenger.

Which brings us to the 2020 campaign.  Alterman recently wrote an article in The Nation insisting that Sanders represented "too big a risk" for the party! (If Alterman were any more unreadable, he'd be illegible.) Back in 2016, some Democrats convinced themselves that Hillary was a "safer" choice than Bernie, and I suppose they'll back affectionate Joe Biden now...

There's a new leftist magazine with the title Jacobin, which represents what The Nation used to be before drinking the prudence koolaid. They recently published an amusing putdown of Alterman's article by Luke Savage, and a Liza Featherstone article putting down Pete Buttigieg.  And now the latest issue of The Nation has an article disapproving of the "takedown" tone in both articles.  Progressives mustn't say Mean Things, you see.

This article, by one Jeffrey Isaacs, has the ineffable title "For Agonistic Respect on the Left." (I had to look up "agonistic," of course.) Isaacs' admirers call him "thoughtful," but I'd have to say that Savage and Featherstone have more thoughtfulness in their little fingers than in all of Isaacs' semi-educated head!  It ends with the line, "And too much is at stake to risk failure." So don't you dare attack the Democratic Party strategy that's largely produced one defeat after another for the last generation or two...

Here we see The Nation adhering to the "play it safe" mentality that blames the 2016 loss on leftists who didn't know their place saying Mean Things.  And they have some nerve putting down Jacobin for exhibiting the qualities that used to distinguish their own magazine.  The Nation has crossed the line from tragedy into farce.

Writing in Korean

“'Take care,' he said, 'take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous than you think in this country.' Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on: 'And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man’s vanity. Away with it!' and opening the heavy window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below"--Dracula

I'm now going to a new reading group at St. Lawrence Market library.  We're reading Bram Stoker's Dracula, a chapter or two at a time.  We take turns reading it aloud. (The others like my Dracula voice.) It should take about five months to finish.

I've finished Uncle Tom's Cabin and started Neil Oliver's Vikings for the History Meetup. (It was published to accompany his BBC documentary series, which I think I saw some of when I was in London seven years ago.)

I also borrowed J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy from the library.  It's a memoir about growing up in the Appalachians and a discussion of the region's continuing problems.  Some people say it's unfair, but I want to decide for myself.

Today I wrote Hongmin an email in Korean!  Writing in a new language is a humbling experience--you may not feel sure you're doing it right, even when you are!  It was slow work, because I had to keep switching between English and Korean keyboard inputs. (English for looking up words, Korean for writing.) I've been correcting all her little mistakes in English--with her encouragement!--and now she'll be doing the same for me.

Will wonders never cease?

"From this time, an inviolable sphere of peace encompassed the lowly heart of the oppressed one--an ever-present Saviour hallowed it as a temple.  Past now the bleeding of earthly regrets; past its fluctuations of hope, and fear, and desire; the human will, bent, and bleeding, and struggling long, was now entirely merged in the Divine.  So short now seemed the remaining voyage of life--so near, so vivid, seemed eternal blessedness--that life's uttermost woes fell from him unharming"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

One comic strip I usually hate is The Family Circus, but the other day Jeffy Keane did an episode I actually liked! (Actually, there was one I liked from decades ago when one of the kids sees an obese guy and asks, "Is that man going to have a baby?")

These days we don't usually see this level of realism in any comic strip, let alone that one! (I especially like the boy imagining his girl in a nun's veil, with his dog commiserating as best he can.)

I've been learning some interesting Korean words on Duolingo.  Their word for a briefcase literally means "007 pack"! (I guess they've shown James Bond movies in Korea.) The other day I was learning words related to the human body, and their word for palm means "hand-floor"! (Sounds a bit like German words...) I've been putting colours in their own category in my word list, but when I learned the words for the senses I gave them their own category and added visual stuff like those colours.

At Sunday's singing group, we were doing "Love Potion Number Nine" and the round "Rose, rose, will I never see thee red?"

I've almost finished Uncle Tom's Cabin.  In the last part, with Simon Legree, it turns into a passion play.  (When Uncle Tom refused to murder Legree, I wanted to say, "Don't be a pussy!  It's Nat Turner time!")

The other night I had a nightmare where I was back in school, and I was way behind because I'd been absent quite a while, and I was afraid to go back because catching up would be such a huge task!

History Meetup

On his daughter's last days: "St. Clare found a strange calm coming over him.  It was not hope--that was impossible; it was not resignation; it was only a calm resting in the present, which seemed so beautiful that he wished to think of no future.  It was like that hush of spirit which we feel amid the bright, mild woods of autumn, when the bright hectic flush is on the trees, and the last lingering flowers by the brook; and we joy in it all the more, because we know that soon it will all pass away"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

Yesterday I had lunch with Pam at the Schnitzel Hub.

Last night I went to the History Meetup.  The subject was Mexico.

Something I ate at the Schnitzel Hub disagreed with me. (The goulash soup?) I got through the Meetup, but after I got home I was sick.  That's why I'm writing this post now instead of a day ago.

My Korean is progressing on Duolingo.  The other day I was learning colours in Korean!

I haven't been following this business of Trudeau Jr. vs. the First Nations woman he kicked out of the cabinet at all.  I guess I'm growing older.

Sha Na Na

"His talents were of the very first order, although his mind showed a preference always for the ideal and the aesthetic, and there was about him that repugnance to the actual business of life which is the common result of this balance of the faculties"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

Funny how one piece of music can remind me of another.  At my Sunday afternoon singing group we've been singing "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square." (Did you know that Vera Lynn is still with us? She's now a centenarian!) In our version there's a coda that starts with some low notes that remind me of...

...of the outro to the TV show Sha Na Na, where Bowzer would say "Grease for peace!" and sing some low notes to start them into "Good Night, Sweetheart." (And a cop would come onstage and run them all in!) I think my favorite Sha Na Na member was Santini.

Sha Na Na did the hand jive school dance number in Grease, the best number in a largely second-rate musical. (Can you really change partners in the middle of a dance contest?) The movie was so lamely directed by Randall Kleiser that the band barely got shown!  And of course, the cast was clearly too old for high school--it makes you appreciate those John Hughes movies where actors like Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall seemed really adolescent.

Some people from the singing group showed up at our first La Traviata performance tonight. (I met them afterward.) I got the inspiration to improve on my royal blue shirt with a black bowtie of mine and the same white wig I wore in last fall's Marriage of Figaro  production!

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

"It's a free country, sir; the man's mine, and I do what I please with him--that's it!"--Uncle Tom's Cabin

I finished the history of Mexico, borrowed Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin from Spadina Rd. library Saturday and started reading it for the second time. The Dickensian influence is pretty clear.

The singing group yesterday was doing "By the Light of the Silvery Moon," "Don't Let the Music Stop" (they changed "I hear America singing" to I hear Canada singing"), and a piece that combined "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "O When the Saints Come Marching in," and "I Wanna Sing, Sing, Sing."

We're putting on La Traviata, and the rehearsals are getting hectic! (I missed last Wednesday's rehearsal because I couldn't find the place--I knew it was on Geary St. but not the number.)

We're now rehearsing at the Al Green Theatre, where we now put on performances.  Tonight we wore our costumes for the first time. (I think I'll bring my bow tie to go with the royal blue shirt!)

I've finally given up on the Reading Out Loud Meetup. (Too many months with hardly anyone turning up!) But I hope someone else is brave enough to replace me as organizer...

I've returned to the Elvenar computer game, and I'm now building cities in two worlds--one human and one elvin.

Busy weekend

Saturday afternoon was another opera rehearsal.  First we had a makeup tutorial:  we're going to have our faces coloured below a diagonal line--sort of a Phantom of the Opera mask in reverse.  And I also had a costume fitting, and will be wearing a royal blue shirt with my black pants.

Yesterday afternoon the singing group did some Irish songs for St. Patrick's day, including "Cockles and Mussels" and "Black Velvet Band." We also sang "The Ash Grove," which I'd suggested.

The Reading Out Loud event was complicated by Dora Keogh having a big music day.  What with the noise and a $10 cover charge, I had to move the location to Timothy's World Coffee again.  Anyway, there was only one other person who had the quietest voice you ever heard, not so suitable for reading aloud.  A couple of other people would have shown up, but there was another schedule irregularity so they came an hour too early--I can't help wondering if there's something wrong with the meetup.com software!

I think I may have to quit the Reading Out Loud Meetup--for month after month there's been almost nobody showing up! (Maybe someone else will dare to take on its organization...)

Tonight was the Classic Book Club Meetup, jointly with the Celtic Culture Meetup, discussing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  A couple of people found the book too difficult for them.

That book of Mexican history is fascinating!  Several times on the subway I've missed my stop because of reading it.

On Duolingo I was recently learning Korean words for animals.  I've been making a glossary of all the Korean words I come across, with a lot of different categories for them:  just now I have Numbers, Courtesy, Relations, House, Time, Weather, Space, City, Country, Culture & learning, Business, Food, Work, Pastimes, Body, Nature and Abstracts. (My only abstract word so far is 의미--uimi--which means "meaning.")

FAREWELL, MY LOVELY

"That car will stick out like spats at an Iowa picnic"--Farewell, My Lovely

Monday night I saw a Raymond Chandler double bill presented by the Toronto Film Society at Innes Hall.  The first was The Brasher Doubloon, with a rather lightweight George Montgomery. The second was Farewell, My Lovely, with a suitably world-weary Robert Mitchum, which I saw for the second time.

Today I helped Anne sort and arrange the pins Miriam will be selling at a craft fair Sunday.  She has a stock of T-shirts and pins with pictures of literary figures like Alan Ginsburg and Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath.  They let me keep one pin that said, "Poetry:  The thing that got you detention"!

I've just been learning Korean words for food on Duolingo. (Quite a few of them are close to their English translations, like hamburger and pizza.)

I've started watching Dragon Ball Z online.  I'm also watching the fourth season of Sailor Moon, which features a winged horse!  I guess I'll start the next season of One Piece too.

No more long johns

"'Did the idea ever occur to you,' Cranly asked, 'that Jesus was not what he pretended to be?'... 'The first person to whom that idea occurred,' Stephen answered, 'was Jesus himself"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Finished A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, including the endnotes.  Now I've started reading Lynn Foster's A Brief History of Mexico for my History Meetup. (Mesoamericans imagined zero long before the Old World did!)

I was way early for the singing group last week, and today I was on time.  We sang "Mairi's Wedding," "You Raise Me Up," "Dream a Little Dream" and "Walkin' My Baby Back Home."

On the way back I was talking to Elizabeth in the group. She's an actress who's learning lines for a revival of the Mae West play Sex!  She told me about some Ryerson community courses for people over fifty, and I'll have to check that out.  When I mentioned that I'd taken some acting lessons, she asked if I was going to return to it and I said, "Never say never!"

I've started reading my Classics Illustrated comics collection again.  This weekend I read The Call of the Wild and Daniel Boone.

It got warmer this weekend, and I've stopped wearing long johns. (There may be some more cold weather, but I don't care.) I need to get new ones anyway.

WHITE HEAT

"His morning walk across the city had begun, and he foreknew that as he passed the sloblands of Fairview he would think of the cloistral silverveined prose of Newman, that as he walked along the North Strand Road, glancing idly at the windows of the provision shops, he would recall the dark humour of Guido Cavalcanti and smile, that as he went by Baird's cutting works in Talbot Place the spirit of Ibsen would blow through him like a keen wind, a spirit of wayward boyish beauty, and that passing a grimy marinedealer's shop beyond the Liffey he would repeat the song by Ben Jonson which begins: 'I was not wearier where I lay'"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"You'll never get away with this, Cody!" "Cody--you have a good memory for names.  Too good." (BLAM!) --White Heat

At Sunday's singing group we sang "The Belle of Belfast City," "We'll Meet Again" and "Danny Boy."

I finished that Teach Yourself Beginning Korean book and started doing Duolingo lesson, like I did before with Portuguese.

I'm reading the last part of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, with Stephen Dedalus as a college boy in intellectual discussions with schoolmates.  James Joyce could have been a playwright, his dialogue feels so natural!  He was starting to develop the style of Ulysses  and Finnegans Wake, as when a kid sibling, asked where their parents have gone, answers, "Goneboro toboro lookboro atboro aboro houseboro."  This edition has a lot of end notes and I've been going through them, which slows me down a bit.

I've started a new computer game called Elvenar.  It's a town-building game from the same people who made Forge of Empires.

Tonight I went to see Raoul Walsh's White Heat yet again with the Classic Movie Meetup.  That's the one with James Cagney as the psychotic gangster with mother issues and a headache problem.  Like many of Cagney's movies, it holds up very well.

A few of my favourite comic strip characters

I thought I'd describe my favourite respective character in some of the comic strips I follow regularly on The Comics Kingdom and GoComics.

Funky Winkerbean:  Bull Bushka.  Back when the main characters were high school students, Bull was a jock and at first a bully.  Now he's just retired as athletics coach and dealing with CTE from the football blows he'd taken to the head. (The strip can be rather downbeat...) I like the way that even the more mature Bull still had a rather intimidating way!

Mary Worth:  Ian Cameron.  Mary's academic neighbor with a skipper's beard, given to bloviating!

Luann:  Gunther.  A platonic friend (so far) of the adolescent title character, he's an earnest dweeb that I identify with personally.

Gil Thorp:  Marty Moon.  In this strip about a high school athletics coach, the bane of Gil's existence is jerky sportscaster Marty.  Right now there's a storyline where young jerk Robby was getting attention by coming on Marty's show and putting Gil down. But Gil's wife Mimi told Marty that Robby's really after Marty's job, so Marty's tricked Robby into revealing his contempt for the town without realizing they're on air...

Among the "vintage" comics I follow:

Heart of Juliet Jones:  Eve Jones.  Julie's passionate younger sister got more erratic  and forlorn as the strip progressed.

Mandrake the Magician:  Lothar. (Every character in this strip had a single name.) His pidgin talk wouldn't be PC today, but I like how whenever Mandrake's brains weren't enough, Lothar would put his fist in!  His catchphrase was "Me smash!"

The Wizard of Id:  The Spook. He's the prisoner in Id's dungeon, always trying to escape.  Do I see deep existential meaning in this character?  No, I've always liked his name!

At tonight's La Traviata rehearsal, when we were dancing in the festive opening scene I tried to do a dance like with Ichabod Crane where one part of his body started moving and it spread to the rest of him!  The catch is that it gets tiring pretty quickly. (Makes you appreciate dance pros--they get tired too, but not nearly as soon.)

The other night I saw a History Channel documentary about the French Revolution on Youtube.  Too bad there was nothing about Mirabeau or Sieyes.

I finally broke Level 1919 in Candy Crush Saga!

THE LEOPARD

"Things will have to change in order that they remain the same"--The Leopard

Wednesday night I saw Luchino Visconti's Risorgimento epic The Leopard (for the third time) with the History Discussion Group.  I guess it's a story about an aging man letting go as his world disappears.

Yesterday was a big opera rehearsal.  It started at 11:00, with a lunch break, and I quit at 4:30. (There was still a little more, but I was worn out.) I have most of it relearned, but the part at the end of the third act I need to do more.  Don't know if I'll be able to do this next year--I just don't have as much energy these days.

I was late for the singing group again today, and took the wrong music binder!  I need to shape up.

THE DIRTY DOZEN

"He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity.  Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision.  He chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and testing its mortifying flavour in secret"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Sunday was the latest Reading Out Loud Meetup.  A Chinese girl called Lu came who wanted to improve her English.  She read a vivid chapter about giving birth from A.J. Cronin's medical novel The Citadel.

Last night I saw Robert Aldrich's unsubtle war movie The Dirty Dozen--for the second time--at the Classic Movie Meetup.  I saw it mostly for Lee Marvin, one of my favorite tough guys. (The New York Times capsule description says: "Entertaining as a blowtorch.") Did you know that this was the most popular movie in American cinemas during the summer of 1967 a.k.a. "the Summer of Love"?

I was just thinking about the early '70s British TV series The Adventures of Black Beauty.  I was thinking how I liked Dr. Gordon, Vicki's widowed father played by William Lucas.  He was always saying wise things like "Rome wasn't built in a day."

I'm pleased that Bernie Sanders is running for U.S. president again!  I have a feeling that this time he'll be unstoppable...

A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

"'Hello!  It's young Dedalus!  What's up?' 'The sky is up,' Brother Michael said"--A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Monday I picked up James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man at the Lillian Smith library, which I'm reading for my book club. (Never read it before.) I'm really getting into it:  twice already I've been reading it on the bus or subway and ended up missing my stop!  This Oxford World's Classics edition is helped immensely by the annotations, like when a family friend tells Stephen that he got his stiff knuckles "making Queen Victoria a birthday present" and a note explains that means he was an Irish rebel in a British prison picking oakum from old ropes!

The book really grabbed me in an early scene where a Christmas dinner is ruined by an argument about Parnell!  I don't care for the sort of novel that says at the start, "It was 1892." I prefer it when you read about something like Parnell, and figure out the time from that.  People at the time mostly weren't thinking, "We're living in 1892"--that's a hindsight construct--but they were thinking about Parnell!

At the same library I was looking for a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel 100 Years of Solitude. (Why? That's another story for the next post...) That book's in big demand:  Lillian Smith had three copies and they were all out!  The next day I was going out to Ali Baba's to buy some falafel wraps and went to the Gladstone library to find the copy there, but the libraries had closed early because of the ice storm.  I went again on Thursday but it turned out to be out there too.  Then today I went to the Northern District branch and that copy was also out--some book club must be reading it!  So I went to Indigo Books and bought a copy.

I'm still not quite over my cold.  Last night I went to opera rehearsal but had to leave early because of a headache. (It didn't help that I'd eaten too much spaghetti.)

I've been answering a lot of questions at quora.com . (Two or three times I've reached my daily limit!) I can't resist giving some smartass answers, like when someone asked "Why do people end sentences with '...or whatever'?" and I answered "Because they're airheads!"

The other night I was watching a PBS documentary on Youtube about Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian revolution.  There's another subject to discuss in my History Meetup!

Crowdread

Wednesday night at the History Meetup we discussed Modern Italy and the Risorgimento.  To help moderate the discussion, I made my winter cap into a talking stone and passed it around to whoever was in turn to talk. (Gotta find a better talking stone!)

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind arrived Friday and I've already read over 100 pages! Those teenage girls in Europe calling for action on climate change remind me of Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke!

I've joined a new Meetup called Crowdread. (Yesterday afternoon we met at the Reference Library.) It's a bit like my Reading Out Loud Meetup:  we bring a text or two and read from them, and discuss them.  John had some Oscar Wilde quotes from The Picture of Dorian Gray, Serge had a text about herd psychology, and Serge's girlfriend (how could I forget her name?) had a Marie Kondo passage about reducing clutter.

I've been reading the "Fear" issue of Lapham's Quarterly, so I read a couple of passages from that.  One was from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon and involved the prisoner communicating with the next cell by tapping on the wall, so for dramatic effect I tapped my glasses on the table, which impressed John.  The other was from Richard Hofstadter's essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." It's a fun group and I'll be going again!

This afternoon I went to the I Wanna Sing group. (Had to miss the last two practices because of my cold!) We sang "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and "You've Got a Friend."

Miriam introduced me to the Flanders and Swann song "The Armadillo." (I know several of their songs but not that one.) It's cute and haunting, in a slightly Noel Cowardesque way!

Fifty-seven

Today was my 57th birthday.  I got a strawberry shortcake from Loblaw's, but we ate the regular falafel wraps with it.

Yesterday, after the memoir session, I went to Indigo Books and ordered my birthday indulgence:  a box set of the manga version of Hayao Miyazaki's Nausikaa of the Valley of the Wind. (I used my gift coupons to pay for most of it.) They'll ship it for free next week!

I've finished the anime seriesThe Rose of Versailles. (It got really compelling at the end.) Now I want to learn more about the French Revolution--I see a future subject for my History Discussion Group! (I've developed a cyclical system for event subjects:  pre-modern, then Europe, then Asia, then the New World.)

The other day my online friend Nikki introduced me to the website quora.ca .  That looks interesting!

I'm still getting over my cold. Yesterday Moira and I joined Pui and Gordon at King Noodle to celebrate the Chinese New Year.